You can now buy 4k projectors from the likes of Digital Projections and Sony for use at home but how do you best scale 1080p (and other lower resolutions) up to that native resolution?

Do you need access to movies in 4k from the studio to make it worthwhile? OR is it better to have more pixels no matter what.

Many of the people who have seen one of our upcoming installs (waiting for it to run and 90 days to pass from the run date in Arch Digest) has a 4k projector in it at home. Very cool... He has some access to native files from the studios however.

You can now buy 4k projectors from the likes of Digital Projections and Sony for use at home but how do you best scale 1080p (and other lower resolutions) up to that native resolution?

Do you need access to movies in 4k from the studio to make it worthwhile? OR is it better to have more pixels no matter what.

Many of the people who have seen one of our upcoming installs (waiting for it to run and 90 days to pass from the run date in Arch Digest) has a 4k projector in it at home. Very cool... He has some access to native files from the studios however.

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From what I remember reading about the Sony, it has a built-in scaler. I am assuming it is very good based on the price of the projector. Also, I don't think anyone is making a 4k scaler for the consumer right now.

Unfortunately, movies shot or post-produced and then released in 4K are scarce (Spider-Man 3, The Da Vinci Code and Ocean’s 13 are a few). So for the most part, we’re seeing the projector’s upscaling capabilities. However, more cinemas are converting to 4K projection systems or installing them upon construction, like the 18-screen Muvico Cineplex that opened last fall in Rosemont, IL.

Sony’s SRX-R105 consumer 4K projector, with accessories, will run you around $100,000, says Floyd. “Projection from a 4K system is so much brighter, cleaner and smoother if you put an HD image on the screen and compare apples to apples [against a 2K projector and screen],” he says. “If you take the 2K and 4K versions of the same movie, there’s so much more information on the 4K image, it’s like night and day.”

Screen manufacturer Screen Excellence has even developed a special material for 4K projection, though John Caldwell, whose StJohn Group is Screen Excellence’s North American distributor, thinks it will be 10 years before 4K makes its mark with anyone besides “the guy who just has to have the best.” I’ll be envious of that guy.

Unfortunately, movies shot or post-produced and then released in 4K are scarce (Spider-Man 3, The Da Vinci Code and Ocean’s 13 are a few). So for the most part, we’re seeing the projector’s upscaling capabilities. However, more cinemas are converting to 4K projection systems or installing them upon construction, like the 18-screen Muvico Cineplex that opened last fall in Rosemont, IL.

Sony’s SRX-R105 consumer 4K projector, with accessories, will run you around $100,000, says Floyd. “Projection from a 4K system is so much brighter, cleaner and smoother if you put an HD image on the screen and compare apples to apples [against a 2K projector and screen],” he says. “If you take the 2K and 4K versions of the same movie, there’s so much more information on the 4K image, it’s like night and day.”

Screen manufacturer Screen Excellence has even developed a special material for 4K projection, though John Caldwell, whose StJohn Group is Screen Excellence’s North American distributor, thinks it will be 10 years before 4K makes its mark with anyone besides “the guy who just has to have the best.” I’ll be envious of that guy.

The projector comes packaged with your choice of a long, short, or medium-throw lens as well as a motorized 2.35:1 anamorphic lens assembly for fixed height ultra-wide screen installations. A "Very Short Throw" option allows the projector to be used in rear projection or simulator applications. All packages also include the 810 Reference Video Scaler which connects to the projector with four parallel DVI-D cables each carrying one quadrant of the image. These four parts are seamlessly stitched back together by the projector to display one integrated full resolution image. Any of these packages will set you back a cool $185,000.

The quoted specs are impressive: 4,000 Lumens of brightness and a native contrast ratio of 10,000:1 But it's the pixel count that really sets this projector apart from the competition. While JVC masks out the top and bottom of this 4Kx2K+ D-ILA light panel using only the "sweet spot" in the center for its own implementation (realizing an effective 4096x2048 resolution), Meridian actually uses the entire panel at 4096x2400 pixels for a total resolution that comes in at just under ten megapixels (9,830,400 pixels to be precise). They are able to do this only after four or more days of hand calibration to each unit which involves extensive testing of the entire projected area for color, brightness and grey scale uniformity, and sometimes extensive re-writing of the lookup tables used by the light engine to map out the projected image.

What source could possibly take advantage of all these pixels? Today? Virtually nothing. Even the mighty 1080p Blu-ray Disc only comprises a mere 2 million pixels. So Meridian had to find a way of taking today's sources, from 480i up to 1080p and enlarging them to the full 10 Megapixels of detail without exposing their less detailed origins. They've done this by partnering with IC maker Marvell whose Qdeo processing technology is responsible for blowing up standard definition and high definition sources to the projector's native 4096x2400 pixel resolution.

The Qdeo processor (short for "Quiet Video" as in the opposite of noisy video) has to do a massive amount of real-time computing to interpolate and rebuild the picture detail that is missing when you try to map a 2 megapixel original to a 10 megapixel final image. Effectively 80% of the viewable image is provided by the processor itself. And when you're viewing a standard definition source, the process is even more daunting as 96% of the image is created by the processor from only around 350,000 pixels in the original image. It's a wonder that they can produce any image at all....

My biggest problem is that 4,000 ANSI Lumens is perfectly good up to 10 feet wide at 24.5 foot-Lamberts, but for anything larger, it might look a bit dull - given the price of $185k, i would like the option of a brighter engine for more money. Why? Because we do not live in the '50's when you could be lucky to see 16.5 foot-Lamberts on the very best screens. Now, it is clear from comparisons with reality that even my 50+ foot-Lambert recommendation is highly subjective based on ambient lighting conditions!!!

In the end, I'm not at all certain that Merdian hasn't just made a consumer SRX-R projector (from JVC and using JVC technology) with better contrast ratio.

Everyone's thoughts, please? Perhaps Bob Stuart will join us for a commentary on design requirements in the 21st century!